The HealthCare.gov debacle has reinforced the divide between the global capital of innovation and an establishment culture known for clunky methods, stilted processes and government entanglements. Even if they want to help, the country’s tech gurus face obstacles with the complex nature of federal IT contracts, the high cost of additional hands, the potential for unfair competitive advantage and the lack of familiarity with the project’s nuances.

Once again, Northern California’s free-for-all mentality is running smack into the Capitol’s cumbersome framework.

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“We would have done this” for a fraction of the price, “and it would have been working perfectly,” Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Bay Area global cloud provider Salesforce.com, said in an interview. “But we were turned away.”

Salesforce.com has spoken to the administration recently about the website issues and made recommendations, Benioff said, but “we are not there. They would need to say, ‘Bring in your team.’”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has said the “tech surge” brought in to repair the website includes “veterans from top Silicon Valley companies.” They need to examine millions of lines of code to understand why people have struggled to sign up and how some insurers have received inaccurate information from those who can enroll.

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Benioff said the administration has encouraged his employee, Vivek Kundra, who served as the White House’s first chief information officer, to come in and help. He did not specify whether Kundra, now Salesforce.com’s executive vice president of emerging markets, agreed to do so.

Kundra did not respond to requests for comment. HHS officials, who said they would draw from the “best and the brightest” computer experts, declined to comment.

The administration already has brought in one of Kundra’s key partners during their time at the White House, former acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients. The pair, along with former Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, championed attempts during the first Obama administration to combat government inefficiency.

Kundra has pushed for changes that would allow tech companies into the relatively closed circle of federal contractors. But few have listened, Benioff said.

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“Washington is very hard to work with as a tech company,” he added. “Their procurement process doesn’t work well in emergency situations like this.”

Certain companies may be able to provide services on a volunteer basis as long as they don’t stand to gain from the project. If they don’t sign a contract or require compensation, businesses might not have to disclose their participation. But even then, it’s not so easy to play savior.

“The skill that is needed most for someone to come in is the knowledge of how the system works,” said Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley startup founder and creator of the popular “lean startup” philosophy. “Even if you got Google up to speed on the crazy architecture that makes no sense, … it’s like if you have a predigital clock and you want to hire a hotshot. You need someone who knows how an antique clock works.”

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A key problem, Ries said, is the government’s “waterfall” approach, a top-down style that involves breaking a project into pieces and then putting all the elements together. The process functions with a predetermined set of rules, something tech companies abandon in favor of a more flexible, open-source process.

“The system is really not very good but still dominates the way IT is done,” Ries said, contrasting the administration’s troubled website with the smooth digital flourish of President Barack Obama’s campaign machinery.

Part of the divide has to do with fundamentally different needs.

Government IT comprises a network of systems that have developed over the past half-century, said Mike Hettinger, the Software & Information Industry Association’s director of public sector innovation. In some cases, thousands of homegrown networks feed into one payroll or financial system. Whereas a scrappy Silicon Valley startup could wipe out a project that doesn’t work, a much larger government agency doesn’t have that luxury.

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These systems usually get built around schedules, such as the Oct. 1 deadline that contractors rushed to meet. Commercial companies don’t tend to have such a locked time frame.

“At the end of the day, Washington and how we procure technology for the federal government is just different,” Hettinger said.

An advocate for federal IT reform, Hettinger agreed the government needs to find a way to move faster. But at this point, “it’s probably better off going with experienced people involved in the system,” he said. “There’s no reason to say we screwed this up and need to bring in Silicon Valley and they can fix it.”

Several Silicon Valley companies, such as Oracle, do conduct some work for the government. The company, for example, provided an identity-verification tool for HealthCare.gov. But much of the tech intelligentsia has little sense of the process.

They would do well to acknowledge that, said Brian Singerman, a former Google executive and now a partner at San Francisco-based Founders Fund.

“When dealing with contracting with the federal government, there is going to be a lot of trickiness that Silicon Valley doesn’t appreciate,” he said. The region’s companies “usually don’t have to do the regulatory stuff, so it’s a little bit of a different beast.”

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Familiar with fumbled starts, the Valley has given the feds some grace. “I never thought the government was going to get it right the first time, even if they hired the right vendors,” said Emily Lam, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s senior director of health care and federal issues. “Not even Apple gets it right.”

The HealthCare.gov catastrophe has a few somewhat positive spinoffs. It has drawn attention to the challenges outside companies face when diving into the established pool of federal IT insiders. And it may help fuel reform.

“This does raise issues about federal procurement overall,” Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s tech subcommittee, told POLITICO. “It is less than attractive in terms of what’s bought, how much is paid for it and how well it functions.”

The Silicon Valley representative said the region “is responding” to the website concerns, but she would not name any players.

Silicon Valley, she said, “is where it all should have come from anyway.”